Yes I read your introduction which told us that you considered yourself to be a disaster area, and noticed that you had already been given some friendly and timely advice concerning practical ways that you might be able to lift your spirits and get through this difficult period of your life with your sanity and sense of humour both still relatively intact.
I fully support and agree with everything that you have been advised to try with the positive intention to beat the extreme case of the blues you are enduring at present with such courage and a determination to successfully make it through this long dark night of your soul, so nothing in the following reading is intended to act as a substitute for or replace the wise counsel already given to you by other members who may or may not also be readers themselves.
I wanted to if I may as part of this reading more closely examine the subject of faith, not from a religious or abstract viewpoint as this is not a theological discussion, but more to do with how faith and a belief that everything happens for a reason, even if at the time the reason for it happening to us temporarily evades us.
Life can so often at times for so many of us seem too hard and to be perfectly honest it can for some of us seem incredibly cruel. There are always people around us (we may be one of them ourselves) who seem to have more than their fair share of life's many trials and tribulations, although what might seem like a disaster and to be cruel to one person, may at the same time be like water off a duck's back to another.
Also how well or otherwise we will cope with our life's challenges can vary immensely according to what amounts of stress we are currently under in other areas, and our general level of health. Most of us fully recognise that when we are feeling under the weather that our problems can so easily and quickly be transformed in our minds and blown up out of all reasonable proportion by our distorted perception into an excuse for a full scale panic attack, when at another time it would hardly have rated on our disaster scale.
So the question I am asking on your behalf here is with regards to how best we can weather life's worst storms, and still come up smiling and ready and willing to tackle the next obstacle which is placed in our paths, which could potentially be encountered t any minute of the clock.
How do we have faith and continue to believe in the basic goodness and fairness of life and our own ability to cope with such a high degree and constantly accelerating rate of change that we are forced to adapt to in our modern society on an almost daily basis when all the evidence appears at least on the surface to point to the opposite being true?
Just as our physical bodies we can be inoculated or immunised against a host of various disease causing organisms or pathogens by first exposing our immune systems to a small dose of the bug in a highly diluted and modified form that will not cause illness but will help our personal defence force to recognise and appropriately respond to the actual illness itself in the future, similarly our soul or spirit frequently needs a shot in the arm or healthy dose of faith to protect it from being overwhelmed by the negative experiences which life inevitably sends our way in order to bring out the best in each of us, and hopefully make us a much stronger person within ourselves as a direct but often uncomfortable and even painful result of having successfully navigated our personal stormy waters.
I have observed throughout my 58 years of life that faith is believed by many people to be something of which we are only given a carefully limited amount at birth, and as life methodically and progressively wears us down (or seems to try its best to) our supply of this essential commodity eventually runs low and if not soon replaced from a source outside ourselves can soon totally disappear like melting snow.
According to many teachings passed down to us by people much who are thank God wiser than ourselves in spiritual matters, faith is neither in short supply, nor does it necessarily need to come from outside us if we are to be given the strength to keep going when it would seem easier at least in the short term give up on life and our dreams and ambitions completely, and feel sorry for ourselves as an excuse for not doing anything further to help ourselves and to make improvements.
The biblical claim that Kingdom of Heaven is within us is not merely an abstract statement that was only ever intended to offer us empty words of hope and comfort, for there is an infinite source of what we call faith always to be found n the human spirit and heart which can be accessed and drawn upon using certain definite and relatively easy techniques whenever our personal supply of it seems to be getting dangerously low to the point of possible imminent extinction.
You cannot it seems force yourself to have faith. For you already have an abundance of it within you, or so we are taught. It is not therefore so much that faith is in short supply in our lives, but instead it is accessing and learning to draw upon this infinite spring of clear, cool, healing water that requires many years and possibly several lifetimes of regular practice in order for us to eventually master the process of continuously topping ourselves up or recharging our spiritual batteries (which are fortunately able to be recharged, well into infinity and beyond).
Everything considered by each of us to be worth accomplishing in our life starts by planting a thought seed in our unconsciousness, which must gradually over time grow and develop under the right carefully controlled and protected conditions, until that thought seed germinates and ultimately breaks through the surface to meet the light of day our physical, shared reality and outer world.
The idea is that eventually what was first without physical form and direction, takes on both. Faith is a lot like that thought seed. Somehow in the face of all the obstacles and challenges, we must give faith both form and direction in our outer existence. What is the use of us having a large supply of faith at our beck and call, if we do not have something or someone to have faith in or apply that faith to?
I would interpret your reading to mean that primarily during the period of the next six months or so, whenever your faith seems to be in especially short supply and an endangered species, that you should have one or more methods at hand to plant some more faith seeds and to sow your crop.
Now just as we are effectively unique individuals with regards to so many other things, the exact way that we plant our on seeds of faith and sow our crop differ greatly from one person to the next, and may even vary considerably at different stages of our own current lifetime. What gives each of us faith, and helps us to drink from the eternal fountain of faith which we have been assured exists within our spiritual centre is probably even more unique than we are overall in most other things.
Some people find their faith in their belief in God or Jesus. Others find all the faith they need in nature, or in the smiles of of an innocent child. Over the next twenty four weeks or so, identify your own unique sources or power symbols of faith, then take whatever action is required to rain upon these little seeds with positive energy and your prayers as well as realistic optimism, instead of plant food, water and fertiliser as a gardener commonly does with his or her most valuable seedlings.
I consequently commend this reading to you for your general guidance and with the hope and confidence that faith will spring eternal from your inner warehouse when it is most needed, as long as the above instructions are listened to and followed to the best of your abilities. You are looking for an improvement in being able to do this more effectively while under pressure over time, and never perfection.
There will no matter how hard and long you might try to do this always continue to be some days which are worse than others. The secret is to make these less than good or happy days gradually less in their negative impact on your spirit and health, and increasingly infrequent or further apart from one another.
Take your next small but significant leap of faith TODAY!
NOW would be a good time to begin.
Enjoy a soft and intensely satisfying landing, after having risked moving outside of your personal comfort zone once again.
EoT
